Another Brad Pitt ‘Basterds’ Photo; Tarantino Said History Books Bogged ‘Inglourious’ Down For Years

Another new photo of Brad Pitt from “Inglorious Basterds”?

Yup. It’s from this site that has a Weinstein 2009 photo credit and it’s also on the L.A. Times blog server, and the LAT just wrote this big preview piece on ‘Basterds’ and talked to Quentin Tarantino (our guess is the photo’s from that scene after the bar sequence where they go to, ahem, “fix up” wounded members of their crew).

There’s some interesting tidbits of info in the piece. Why did this film take years to get off the ground? (In the “Kill Bill,” DVD commentary, which we randomly watched recently, Tarantino said he had ‘Basterds’ in mind for his next project after 1997’s “Jackie Brown,” but was derailed by the creative spark for ‘Bill,’ which puts the gestation of the idea around 12 years, give or take)

Part of it was apparently research, and the paper says he was stuck in history books which only helped along the plot confusion. “The problem with doing World War II research is that it can derail you, because there are too many great stories, too many good ideas to go around,” QT said.

He also explains the Basterds sadistic motivations in the picture.

“Their mission is to psychologically beat the Germans by desecrating and butchering their bodies, taking their scalps, disemboweling them and always leaving one soldier alive to tell the story,” Tarantino says, sipping an iced tea on the second-floor balcony of his Hollywood Hills home overlooking Universal Studios. It’s akin, he says, to what the Apaches did to the U.S. Cavalry: When you’d rather die than be captured, the enemy is winning the mind game.

If you haven’t guessed already, it’s not your typical WWII picture. “This isn’t antiwar misery,” he said, probably trying to distance it from things like “Schindler’s List.” Dude, everyone knows you’re not about to make a picture like that! But thanks for clarifying nonetheless.